Gilbert Temple

Last Saturday we took our family to the Gilbert Temple open house.  We started by watching a video in the chapel next to the temple.  Well, Nate and the kids watched a video.  I tried to keep Arie quiet in the foyer.  I think she knows that if we are at church, she is supposed to be in the halls.  After the video, we walked through the temple.  It was beautiful, as expected.  The chandelier in the Celestial Room was especially impressive.  It was strange though... to be walking through the temple with the noise of a large, talking crowd.  It was so opposite from normal.  Not that this was surprising, but it was also interesting to note how absolutely different it feels to be in an undedicated temple as opposed to a dedicated one.  Maybe this isn't quite the right way to say it, but right now, it is just a building.  Once it is dedicated, it truly becomes a House of the Lord, and you can feel it.

Melanie and Tyler and Jade, Rob and Tina's family, and Mom and Dad also went to the open house on the same day, but we had different reservation times so we didn't go together.  But Melanie lives just around the corner in Gilbert, so we all hung out at her house afterward.  Then we all went out to eat dinner at Chili's.  It was a fun day. 

But, I did feel a little bad because Natalie and Kelton were both a bit sick.  They weren't complaining too much, but both had slight fevers and didn't look real great. 

Well, that was the beginning of a very fun week for our family.  There is a nasty flu bug going around like wildfire that has infiltrated our household.  It starts with coughing, then more painful coughing, then fevers, chills, severe aches and headaches, stuffiness and then feeling generally crappy.  It's one of those that morphs from day to day instead of getting better as each day passes.  Everyone in our house has caught it, some to varying degrees, but today, almost a week later, this picture just about sums up how we are doing.

But we'll live.  I hope.  I had friends tell me this one takes a full week to start getting better.  I didn't believe them, but now I do.  Being sick and taking care of sick kids simultaneously is not good for improving my patience.  But I must say, I am so grateful to live in today's world, with today's medicine that has made this somewhat bearable. 

My favorite 6 year old's birthday

Kelton turned 6 this past week!  He has been so excited for his birthday to come.  He's been using our calendar count down blocks to count down the days.  It's kind of funny though because there weren't really any presents that he was wanting.  He was just excited for his birthday to come. 

 

As always, we woke him up by singing "Happy Birthday" and gave him his presents in bed.  I love this picture... he's so excited, but still sleepy, and the light we had just turned on was really bright.  It's also fun to wake Kelton up because he is my only "baby" who is technically already the new age when we get up in the morning.  At the time we took this picture, he would have been about 20 minutes old on his actual day of birth, if that makes any sense.  (He was born at 5:55 a.m.)

It was a little difficult to come up with presents since we just had Christmas, and Kelton gave us absolutely no ideas.  I never took a picture of his presents, but he got Pikmin 3 for the Wii U, two Star Wars guys (Obi Wan and Darth Vader), Uno Power Grab game, the movie "Bolt," and an Angry Birds puzzle.  Grandma and Grandpa Burgess gave him Sonic Lost World for the Wii U, which he was super excited about.  If there is one thing this kid loves right now, it is Sonic the Hedgehog.  Grandma and Grandpa Webb sent a $20 bill (which made his eyes grow wide to get so much money) inside of a rousing, singing birthday card which took him off guard a bit in his sleepy state.  But he spent the afternoon after school listening to it over and over again until he knew all the words.  After presents were opened, we got kids ready for school and off on the bus.

The kids' schools do not allow anything homemade to be brought in for the kids.  I'm sure I've complained about this before.  I guess I get it, but it is still annoying not to be able to make cupcakes for a dollar or two to take in for a birthday treat.  So we took in popsicles.  Ah, the benefits of living in the desert in the winter.  I even had to take them in a cooler so they wouldn't melt too fast, and even so, it was close.  Kelton got to wear the special birthday hat while his class sang "Happy Birthday" and then everyone got a popsicle.  (Arie is friends with Kelton's teacher, Jenn Vaterlaus.  We are in the same ward and Arie always climbs up on her lap in Relief Society.  That's why Jenn is holding Arie in this picture.)  Because I took the popsicles in at the end of the day, Kelton got to come home with us instead of riding the bus, which he thought was fun.

At home, Kelton spent pretty much the whole afternoon doing his new puzzle.  I was surprised that he didn't go straight for the Wii U games.  It's kind of a cool puzzle.  It's three puzzles that push together, once finished, to form one big picture.  Each puzzle has different sized pieces.  In all, I think there are about 160 pieces.

You can see his two Star Wars guys in the back of this picture... He would intermittently play with them while doing his puzzle.

 

 

When Kelton first came downstairs this morning, he asked, "Where's my cake?"  I told him I hadn't started it yet and that it would be done when he got home from school.  I felt bad because I would have liked to have had it done and sitting on the counter when he woke up, but time just didn't permit.  I even ran out of time that morning and had to finish it after he got home from school. 

 

I have to interject something here, and hopefully my kids will understand when they read this someday.  I am getting burned out on cake making.  For the first few years, it was fun.  But making cakes is time consuming.  And with four kids who are still small, time can be hard to come by.  Birthday cake making has become somewhat of a chore.  For the last few birthdays I have found myself wishing that my kids would be happy with a cake, frosted in the pan, with some sprinkles or something on top.  Because that's what normal people do.  Not crazy, cake making people.  But years ago, I set a standard of crazy cake making, so here we are.  Really, I kept this one simple and the frosting transfer didn't take too long. 

 

Natalie came over right after I finished the cake.  I asked her if it looked good.  She said, in an even tone, "Yeah, it looks good.  I mean, it looks really good.....for a thirty year old."  She makes me laugh.  I'm still not quite sure how to take that comment.  It reminded me of how a mother talks to a preschooler who has just held up their prized drawing, and the mother has absolutely no idea what it even is.  Have I even mentioned that life would be very dull without Natalie?

 

Anyway, Kelton requested Sonic, and he got Sonic.


Here is his reaction to seeing his cake.  He loved it.  Which, I guess, is why I put up with the crazy cake making.

Happy birthday Kelton!  We love you!

Frozen

With six people to buy food for, we have been running out of room in our deep freeze.  Add that to the fact that every time I get stuff from Costco, I have to pretty much empty the whole deep freeze to rotate the food and get the new stuff put on the bottom.  I have been very fed up with the whole process for quite a while. 

But no longer.  As of today. 

We went from this:

To this:

So much better. 

Our little deep freeze served us well for nine years, but it was time for an upgrade.  Oh, and note to self... if you every buy another freezer, do it in the summer when it a thousand degrees outside--and in the house.  Because transferring a freezer full of frozen stuff to another freezer when you are already freezing is about as fun as it sounds.

10 years and counting!

Nate and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary on January 2nd!  It was on the same day as Melanie and Tyler's wedding in San Diego, so we were in California for our anniversary.  So here's what we got to do on our anniversary:

 

We got to go to the temple.  I wish we could have done sealings, but it didn't work out time wise. 

 

We got to go to the beach.

We also got to go to dinner without our kids.  We put them to bed at the hotel and left grandma and grandpa in charge.  Then we went to Outback.  There was also a Krispy Kreme next door, so we got donuts afterward too. 

We are hopefully planning an actual trip to celebrate our 10 years of marriage.  In the past 8 1/2 years since we've had kids, we've never spent a night away from them together.  We've been saving up and would like to go to Puerto Rico (where Nate served his mission), but we will see if it works out.

I am so thankful to have this sweet, loving husband who makes my life so much better every day.  Ten great years down, and many more to come!

Trip to San Diego for a wedding

This past Wednesday, we drove to San Diego for Melanie and Tyler's wedding.  I also opened my new camera on the way and read through how to at least make it function, so I took a lot of pictures.  So maybe I will just walk you through our weekend using mostly photos.

On Wednesday night, we had a dinner with both of the families at a nearby church.

Damon and Jade--cute little crazies

Arie loving on daddy

 

Tyler's dad gave Melanie and Tyler a little test to see how well they knew each other.

The next morning, January 2nd, was the wedding in the San Diego Temple.  It was very nice.  I wish we would have had more time to actually be in the temple and look around.  We didn't get to see the spiral staircase or the Celestial Room.  But as soon as the sealing was done, Nate and I rushed out to go get our kids (who were being babysat at the hotel by a local young woman from one of the wards) so we could have them back in time to take pictures.

This next set of pictures cracks me up.  I was trying to get a nice picture of this shot...

...when I was interrupted by Thing 1... (Jade)

...being chased by Thing 2 (Damon)

And being at the temple, taking pictures, was hard work for everyone.

After lunch and a little bit of rest, we headed out to La Jolla Beach.  We got there later than we wanted to.  It was a pretty warm day, but we didn't get to the beach until about an hour before sunset.  So it was a little bit cool.  Mom, Dad, and Jade as well as Rob and Tina were there with us.

We really thought the kids would have fun just playing in the sand and maybe putting their feet in the water.  We were wrong.  Those crazy kids wanted to play in the water.  In the cold, January, Pacific Ocean.  Natalie actually got completely in and went under several times. 

 

Here's all of the "we aren't cold!" pictures.

When we finally got them out of the water for good, we heard nothing but crying about how freezing they were.  Natalie was even yelling about how she was never going to get in the ocean again in January.  It probably wouldn't have been so bad if the sun were still up in the sky, providing some warmth.  But it was really fun to watch the sun set over the ocean.

I tried to take one of those cute family-feet-in-the-sand pictures.  It didn't work.

Arie loved the beach too.  She spent some time chasing seagulls, but never got very close.

Right before we left, Arie decided she wanted to discover the ocean and just started walking out in the water, apparently not bothered by the temperature either.  I pulled her back and then had Nate walk her out.

Kelton has had his first loose tooth and it got super loose while we were in California. I pulled it out for him the next morning (after the beach) and the Tooth Fairy visited him at Melanie's house.  The Tooth Fairy has visited him twice (for three teeth) and has yet to retrieve teeth from Kelton's own house.  (His front two teeth were pulled out by dentist Uncle Chad and picked up at grandma's.)

The day after the wedding we took our time eating breakfast and playing in the hotel pool.  Then we packed up and headed to Melanie's house in Gilbert.  The next day (Saturday) was the reception.  We went to Costco in the morning and then spent the rest of the day getting food ready.  It wasn't until after I cut up all kinds of fruit and skewered them all day--and then cut up 12 small-ish baguette loaves that I decided to try to cut my finger off. (Okay, not really off)  Good thing Melanie worked as a nurse and had steri strips and my parents had super glue.

We all went and helped set up the reception.  It looked really nice.  And somehow, my kids made it through the set up, the reception, and the clean up afterward, which didn't end until after 10:00 p.m.

Miss Jade.

Cupcakes!

Photo station set up for guests.

Damon got upset for some reason, and wanted his own picture.

 

 

At the end, we all danced (but all my pictures turned out blurry because of the setting I had the camera on), then cleaned up, and headed home.  We didn't arrive until after midnight.  Our new church schedule is 9:00 and we were not on time this morning.  Considering that when I woke up it was almost 8:30, Nate was in the shower, and the kids were still in pajamas and hadn't eaten, and it takes 10 minutes to drive to the church, I'm surprised were only 20 minutes late.  Our kids looked a bit homeless with their hair undone and the boys shirts were dirty from the reception--but we were there!

Updates...

I spent the day updating my out-of-date blog, so there are five new posts!  If you are one of those people who likes things in order, you may want to scroll down to the Thanksgiving post and work your way up from there.  Or, it probably is much easier to start at the top and just read until you fall asleep get through Thanksgiving.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

I can't believe that December has come and (almost) gone, along with Christmas!  This month has been crazy, and busy, and fun.  Like last year, we stayed home for Christmas.  The kids were so excited and could hardly wait in those last few days.

Grandma and Grandpa Webb sent a present for Christmas Eve... new pajamas.  The kids were over the top excited about the characters on their pajamas.  Natalie had My Little Pony, Kelton had Sonic the Hedgehog, and Damon had Skylanders (we don't even have Skylanders, but he was thrilled).  I was afraid they might not ever calm down and go to sleep.  Arie got some too, but she is so small and they were so big.  After pajamas were on, we loaded them in the car to go look at Christmas lights while I read Luke 2 to them.

Christmas morning... before letting the kids come down.  And juggling that feeling of "is there enough?  Is there too much?"

And here are some favorite pictures.

Each of the kids earned their own money over the past few months and used it to buy a present for whichever sibling they had this year.  This Optimus Prime was from Kelton and Damon had been asking for it for a while.

Natalie has been endlessly talking about these Equestria Girls dolls (My Little Pony turned into humans) for months and months.  And has been begging for one for just as long.  (They aren't my favorite because they are made to look so much like Monster High dolls, but after much discussion and even making Natalie pray about it :) we decided she could have one.)  Kelton bought her this one and she gave him the biggest hug after she opened it.

I made hats for the kids.  Damon doesn't know what Ninjago is, but when he saw some others I was making he asked, "is that a ninja hat?!"  He was so excited about it and told me that he wanted a black ninja hat.  He was excited to open this.

I made an owl hat for something a few months back and ever since, Kelton has wanted an owl hat.  Plus, he loves blue, his school mascot is an owl, and two of his uniform colors are blue and gray.  So this hat was perfect.  :)  He's already worn it several times since he opened it, including this morning when he was cold after taking a shower.

Natalie also got a hat, but it was my first hat making fail.  I tried to do a Princess Celestia hat.  It was white with a few stripes of her hair colors and then I tried to make her eyes and put them on.  The result was.... um... I have no words.  I should have taken a picture so you could see what I mean.  And because I don't take craft failure very well, I ended up going to JoAnn's to buy a new set of yarn--on Christmas Eve.  I frantically made a whole new hat that ended up being plain with some colored stripes and nothing else on it.  I told Natalie I could try to put Celestia's sun-shaped cutie mark on it, but I'm not real confident in how that might turn out.  I felt bad I didn't have something equally as cute as the boys' hats for her.  She was gracious and told me she loved both hats.  I didn't even consider making one for Arie, who hates to even have her hooded bath towel on her head.  Such a shame because these hats are adorable on babies.

Santa was smart enough this year to assemble the baby toys and then wrap them ready-to-use.  (Actually, I believe it was his super smart wife who gave him the idea.)  Arie got this car, a rocking giraffe, and a dinosaur toy with lots of ABC buttons.  Each kept her plenty occupied (and away from everyone else's stuff) while the rest of us opened presents.  She loved this car.  She kept going back to it and would sit down and play and dance to the music. 

We've been invaded... I think these three Furby's stole the show this Christmas.  (This is one of the items Santa braved sending his poor elves in on Black Friday to retrieve.)  They do all kinds of things, including interacting with each other and you can play/take care of them using your phone or tablet.  Needless to say, my iPhone and Nate's iPad have been hijacked over the past two days.

We didn't go through and make sure the kids had all their stuff assembled, but here is each of them with their presents.  You might notice all the blankets in the pictures... Grandma and Grandpa Webb made each of them a super soft blanket for their bed with their name embroidered on it. 

Kelton had a lot of Legos and building stuff.

Damon got some Trio blocks and Imaginext planes and dragon.

Natalie was mostly dominated by My Little Pony.  (You can see my stack in the background.  Nate got me a new hand mixer to replace mine that died a few months back and has been sorely missed.  There's a cute skirt on top.  And a Nikon digital SLR camera, which I would love to learn how to use but am a little afraid of it.  And while we are on the topic of the parents, I got Nate a Wii U and Disney Infinity.)

Stockings...

We also did FaceTime with my parents so they could see the kids unwrap their presents from them.  They were cute stand alone fabric zipper pouches filled with candy, toys, and $10.  The kids love them and have already found things to put in them.  And since Wal Mart had problems with getting my order to me on time, I had the iPad mini at my house that all of my siblings and I bought for Mom and Dad.  So we had our kids open it for them so they could see it.

We also did FaceTime with Nate's parents while they opened their present from us.  We got them a generic tablet, which I hope holds up for them and I hope they enjoy.  We pre-loaded apps like Gospel Library, Skype, Facebook, and Netflix on there for them--things they will hopefully find useful.

Christmas day went by so quickly.  So quickly in fact that neither Nate or I showered or got out of our pajamas--which actually drives both of us crazy.  But part of why that happened could also be due to the fact that neither one of us was feeling real great.  I've been battling a sinus infection for about week and Nate's cold has morphed into something new too.  We played with new toys with the kids, cleaned up, cleaned up some more, made a nice dinner, which half the family didn't eat (little stinkers), and were thoroughly exhausted by the end of the day.  But it was a good, fun day.